Christopher Earley is currently British Society of Aesthetics Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, working with Vid Simoniti. His work focuses on the epistemology of art and the way aesthetic artefacts can help us figure out our place in history. Chris will be taking up his Leverhulme Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. Here he tells us a bit about the project.
"For my Leverhulme project, I will be investigating the social epistemology of art. Many people believe that artworks can help us acquire knowledge and understanding. However, it is widely assumed that this happens because artists use their artworks to convey these insights to us. This project challenges this assumption by showing that learning through art often takes the form of collaborative inquiry, with the many different parties who produce, disseminate, and appreciate art working together to produce insights. Foregrounding collaboration produces a novel understanding of how learning can affect our appreciation of art and provides novel perspectives on what makes the arts distinct from other domains of inquiry."